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starship-design: Re: Starship Design
In a message dated 7/3/00 4:41:44 PM, bldingel@rconnect.com writes:
>How often, in human history, has any civilization gone out of it's way
>to cover vast distances in order to colonize some other place and use it's
>resources?
>
>Answer: Once, and by accident. Remember Christopher Columbus?
Actually most tribes would drift into new teratories. Vikings got as far as
the new world and Arabia. But yes, without a damn good, and practical
reason, you would colonize interstellar space, and I strongly argued against
even considering it as a reason for a near term starflight.
>The likelyhood of any human enduring long travel at high speed for a short
>period of time (under 10 years) does just not exist. The only plauseable
>way to travel as far as Alpha Centauri and have a chance for colonization,
>is to live a few centuries in space and adapt to life out there. If
generations
>of adaptation and growth can take place during the trip, then you will
>have a new civilization and more intelligent people.
Adomently disagree.
- A slow ship is certain to never get there before faster ships launched
later.
- A multigeneration ship, or one last more then a couple decadse, would
need to be the size of a full civilization. 100's of thousands to millions
of people, not hundreds. The ship would need to be VAST in size.
Inconceavable in any realistic senerio.
- It would be far harder to to interest qualified personel to fly on such a
ship with virtually no chance to get there and contribute to knew knowledge.
- It is technically vastly hard to make a slow long endurence ship, rather
then a smaller faster ship. Much less make it as safe.
>The only type of starship that would work is what I call the Neogenesis.
>It would be a planet that moves with only a small propulsion system, allowing
>it to coast, and stop, effectively.
>
>
>
>The only possible way to build the Neogenesis is to terraform the moon,
>and put a massive steel shield all the way around it, then you could put
>millions of greenhouses in the now 'Neogenesis' and let the terraforming
>take place naturally. Water would form on it's own, a climate would develope,
>the atmosphere would form. The gravity and magnetic field would have to
>be further strengthened to allow for 'normal' growth, so the Neogenesis
>would have to be spun faster.
Most of what you list (spining the "planet to increase the mag and gravity
fields, generating a climae, etc) are pure fantasy and not even theoretically
possible. As to shelling in a planet, and boosting it. Even if it was
possible, it would be stupid and wastefull. It would be far easier to make a
faster small ship, and the big "planet ship" wouldn't give any advantage.
>As soon as you had a stable environment, the Neogenesis would have to be
>towed by the Earth and the 'slingshot' theory would be given a go.
>
>
>
>When you reached Alpha Centauri, you would land the Neogenesis in orbit
>with the planet, bring down a ship from the Neogenesis to do research on
>it, and learn as much as necessary to colonize the planet.
>
>
>
>I'll leave the details to you.
>
>
>
>Brendan Porter of Northwest Iowa. Sophomore in Highschool.
Glad your interested in the site, but you need a lot more understanding of
the basic ideas your talking about.
Kelly Starks